“Simpatico”

“Simpatico”

Running, heavily breathing, wrapping her in the minimal tatters of clothes that clung to her body
after that night of repugnant circumstances, limping and still managing to flee away from the
goons that hounded her existence, treating her only as a commodity of sexual gratification, she
escaped.
As she crawled on the newly constructed road that housed the homeless during the night, she left
blood stains on the freshly laid tar, quietly making her way to a safer place. Regaining her breath,
she huddled in a cardboard box trying to comfort her soul after the annihilation of humanity that
occurred on her very body, being treated as a carcass even after she shouted for help and in
return received a silent echo of dereliction haunting her battered conscience.
Fighting a battle with the freezing temperature and the pain that had damaged both her body and
soul, she stopped responding to the chilly breeze or to wind brutally attacking her from the torn
parts of her clothes.
As the sun engulfed the night and gave birth to a new day, she felt more clothes on her body that
the night before. With one eye open, she could see something like a blanket covering her
contused body and with the other bruised eye, still struggling to open itself and see the world.
A little boy sat asleep next to her, holding a dagger in one hand and his foot tightly placed at the
end of the blanket that he shielded the girl with. He has stayed up all night to protect her when he
found her unconscious and torn in the cardboard box.
Finding him be the guardian angel beside her, she shed tears holding his hand, laying her
forehead on the back of his palm. Her whimpering and tears that glistened on his rough dark
hands woke him up.
Loosening his grip on the dagger, he told her how he had lost his sister to the cold and to
scoundrels who choked the life out of her and how he couldn’t lose another one.
The orphan girl found a family and the young boy now grew under the warmth and affection of
his new elder sister.

- Tarushi Aswani

Prismatic Happiness

Happiness has been among one of the most well explored states of satisfaction.
Man has constantly been in the pursuit of happiness. But has anyone actually ever explored that realm of the heart that makes us feel ‘happy’.
While I jogged in the park every evening, meeting new faces and looking at some old sweaty ones had taken the place of a daily chore. When others jogged,a few tried catching their breath, I happened to notice a little young boy sitting by the sidewalk. With his tiny hands shoved in his face, he appeared to me as if he were bereaved of his carefree life as a child. Days passed, and so did weeks,but the little boy didn’t move an inch from his spot on the pavement. Another evening was at its crest, I just couldn’t hold my curiosity in anymore. I started walking towards the boy, even me sitting beside him didn’t happen to intrigue him at all. For the first time in my life, I was nervous about taking to none other than this mum child.So I began this very weird conversation on a very casual note by asking him his name, to my surprise, he got up that very moment and left the park. The next day I saw the little tremor again, I kept thinking whether or not I should go over and commence this colossal task again. I just couldn’t disturb the serene look on his face. The next day I bloated up myself with courage, determined to inquire the reason of his acquired solitude. After I was done with the jog, I went up to him and asked him his name, suddenly the boy got up and snapped at me saying that his mother had told him not to talk to strangers. To this, I very neutrally asked him about the whereabouts of his mother. He ran away. Again. The next day I waited till it was time for him to leave the park. I followed him down the alley he plodded. Following him, I reached his abode only to find that the casserole of loathing his parents were over-heating was the perfect recipe for divorce. Clanking of crockery and shards of hope lay crippled on the floor,inviting the inmates to bruise themselves.

The kid came running out of his house with fingers deeply plunged into his ears at lightning speed, leaving behind a house of cards built on quicksand. Just as he saw me, he started kicking dirt on me, crying at the same time. Tired of the miserable prank life played on him, he hugged me. And in that hug of a minute, I succumbed to the situation but I also realised that how easily we take people for granted. Every tick of the clock takes something away, fades something, and brings something to life. And most importantly, acts as a constant reminder of the fact that not everyone is as lucky as you are to have someone to make you smile, to laugh with you, to wipe your tears even before they die while tracing their way down your face.

Happiness is still an algorithm that remains undeciphered. Happiness is still, for some people as abrupt as London’s weather. But most importantly, happiness is understanding someone without the exchange of words and gestures.

Holding Hands

Holding Hands

It was a new day, a new beginning for the others, but for him it was another breath, full of bottled oxygen. In his youth, loosing hair because of chemotherapy and completely sunken cheek bones was the last thing he could even imagine.
Every time that he turned during sleep, chills of pain would grip his entire body, and tears would race down his ears as he cried himself to sleep. And another night of limitless miseries impregnated a new day. How is a person in this stature supposed to keep the flame of hope burning in him despite the fact that he is has been diagnosed with one of the most fatal diseases in the world ; cancer. Another puff of oxygen, his vision started to blur, and as the light making its way from the window filled his face, all he could ask for was to be put out of all this agony. The man suffered a loss of blood, bone and mineral density as well as the survival instinct and a pinch of hope. The instinct that keeps you going, moving on in life and ahead of others. Like that moment when a child decides to use heaps of paper to make a paper boat in rains, even though he knows that the boat is bound to be razed by the splatter of the raindrops.

Children, they can just usher a storm beside you in the littlest fraction of a second. Ever thriving with energy and enthusiasm, children never back down. What is a child dragged into the claws of despair by cancer? A child who is not ready to give away even a minute of the joy he gets by jumping puddles of mud. The nurse drew the curtains, to make way for the child into the bed beside the old man. The child had brought along a binocular, a slingshot and a little handy comb. The old man looked at the child as he adjusted his oxygen mask to lie on his side. The child did not keep still for a moment, he began fidgeting with his hospital wear, and scrubbing his newly shaved head. Laughing and scratching his own bare head the old man asked the child as to why he had got a comb when he had absolutely no hair left, the child smiled at the old man and looked away. The man turned to his other side and began to stare at the ceiling. A new day began with the chirping of a blue jay outside the window, the old man woke up, so did the child. It was time for radiation therapy. After they had come from the therapy the old man again began to ask the child about the comb, but then again the child smilingly refused to answer.

Days went by, even weeks passed in the face of silence where the man once sought to look for the sound of the echo of his own pain that lingered in each breath that he inhaled with hope and exhaled with pain. He became highly ignorant of his surroundings, as the only companion of his; the boy had been shifted to a special unit of the hospital. The question of the bald boy carrying a comb haunted and daunted him. One day the old man was in the hospital lawn sitting on a wheelchair, he had fallen asleep while gazing at the flora, and just then someone tapped the shoulder of the man. It was boy who claimed he knew the man, but the old man failed to recognise him. Just then the boy showed the old man his little blue comb, and that very second the man realised that this was the same boy who was frail and bald a few weeks back. He had thick, shiny hair now. The boy said to the old man – “I never lost hope, and now you never will.” As he placed the comb into the old man’s lap.